NEWS
RELEASE from the United States Department of DefenseNo. 1161-05IMMEDIATE RELEASENovember 7, 2005Media Contact: Army Public Affairs - (703)
692-2000 Public/Industry Contact: (703)428-0711

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the
death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas A. Wren, 44, of Lorton,
Virginia, died in Tallil, Iraq, on November 5, 2005, when a civilian vehicle
pulled in front of his HMMWV causing it to roll-over. Wren was an
Army Reservist assigned to the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq
in Tallil, Iraq.

The incident is under investigation.

For further information related to this release,
contact Army Public Affairs at (703) 692-2000.
A Fairfax County, Virgijnia, father of five has been killed
in Iraq in a humvee accident.

The Pentagon says 44-year-old Lieutenant Colonel
Thomas Wren of Lorton was one of four occupants in the humvee when it rolled
over during non-combat-related activities. Family members say he'll be
buried Tuesday at Arlington National Cemetery.

His death is one of the highest ranking casualties
in the war so far. He's one of only 12 Lieutenant Colonels killed in Iraq.

Family members tell The Washington Post that
Wren had recently married but never got to live with his new wife Holly
Wren. They married in July, two months after their son, Tyler, was born.

Wren also had four children from a previous
marriage.

Wren was on his third tour of duty, also serving
in Afghanistan.

He had been recently promoted to a job that
involved training the Iraqi military, rather than combat missions.
Wednesday, November 9, 2005Courtesy of the Washington Post

A Fairfax County father of five was killed
in Iraq last week when the Humvee he was in crashed, becoming one of the
highest-ranking casualties in the war so far, Army officials said yesterday.

Lieuteanat Colonel Thomas A. Wren, 44, of Lorton
died Saturday in Tallil, southeast of Baghdad, when a civilian vehicle
pulled in front of the Humvee, causing it to roll down an embankment. Wren,
the recipient of a Bronze Star for service in Bosnia, was one of only 12
lieutenant colonels killed in Iraq.

Wren was the second Virginia soldier reported
killed there in two days.

Staff Sergeant Jason A. Fegler, 24, of Virginia
Beach died Friday in Baghdad during combat under circumstances that are
being investigated as a potential friendly-fire incident. Fegler, a member
of the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, grew up in Harrisburg,
Nebraska., and was the father of a 2-year-old boy.

Family members said Wren had recently met the
love of his life, Holly Wren, whom he married July 4, two months after
their son, Tyler, was born.

"Everyone says they just don't remember either
of them being so happy," said Holly's mother, Audrey Thomasson of White
Stone, Va. "She keeps saying he had such a wonderful, big heart."

"They never even lived together," Thomasson
said, adding that her daughter was asleep in the next room with one of
her husband's shirts. "She has not spent one married day with him."

Wren also had four children from a previous
marriage.

A longtime reservist who had also seen combat
in Afghanistan, Wren was on his third tour of duty and had recently been
promoted to a job that involved training Iraqi military rather than combat
missions, said his younger brother, Tim Puckett of Tampa.

"We really weren't that worried this time,"
he said.

Wren came from a family of veterans. His father
served in Vietnam, and his grandfather was in World War II and the Korean
War. His own interest in the Army dated to when he was a boy in elementary
school, Puckett said.

"He was GI Joe from the word go," he said.
"For Halloween, he was GI Joe. For Christmas. Any time he could dress up,
he would."

In the tiny town of Harrisburg, friends and
neighbors were reeling at the news of Fegler's death.

Like Wren, Fegler had been interested in the
military since boyhood. "When he was very small, at recess, he and the
boys would play at soldiers," said Sarah Lease, a classmate who had known
him since first grade. "He loved serving his country. He talked about it
all the time."

Fegler lived in Virginia Beach with his wife,
Shianne, who is in the Navy, and their 2-year-old son, Aiden.

Tall, blond and lanky, he played basketball
and football at Banner County High School, where the graduating class had
17 people. After high school, he spent four years in the Marines, and he
enlisted in the Army this year, Lease said. He hoped to join the Special
Forces.

Lease said she and her classmates visited Fegler's
mother and stepfather Monday night to offer condolences. She said his death
has touched everyone in Harrisburg, population 75.

"It's really made the war real," she said.
"Until something like this happens, it doesn't seem like it's really there.
In a community that's so small and everyone knows everyone, it's really
opened people's eyes."

Jan Wiseman, whose son John Harsh was a close
friend of Fegler's, recalled his close friendships. "There is a pack of
six to eight boys that ran with each other all the time who have stayed
very, very close," she said, adding that her son, a Marine, was on his
way back to Harrisburg after hearing about Fegler's death. "They were brothers
through and through, and that's how he felt about the military, too."

Puckett said that Wren was excited about his
new posting in Iraq. "He felt that he was doing great work, helping to
free the Iraqi people," he said.

Wren will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery
on Tuesday, his brother said. No funeral arrangements have been made for
Feglel.

2 November 2006:

It's the military's most solemn duty: caring
for the families of soldiers killed in battle. But, as WTOV9 discovered,
too many war widows feel like they've been wronged by the system that is
supposed to protect them.

From the burial process to collecting money
from the military and other agencies, Iraq war widow Holly Wren faced a
challenge at every turn.

"There was no healing time. I wasn't able to
grieve at all," she said. "It's hard to shuffle from office to office after
you deal with something like this."

Wren's ordeal started at the sacred place where
her beloved husband, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Wren, was buried. She says
the date on his headstone at Arlington National Cemetery is wrong, and
she does not believe he was buried with all of the medals he earned.

Then she had to go to battle for her benefits.
Her housing allowance was half of what she was owed. She waited longer
that she was supposed to for her husband's retirement money and death benefit.
She also had to hire a lawyer and go to court so their infant son, Tyler,
could be a beneficiary.

She said, "The paperwork sat on someone's desk
for months, the benefits were not explained properly."

Wren's assigned casualty officer tried to help
untangle the bureaucracy, but he didn't know all of the benefits she should
receive and the two of them felt like they were cobbling information together.
Other people she encountered in the system were downright rude.

"I was treated like a nuisance at times," she
said, "We're just a job to them, and it's so much more than that."

Members of Congress have been hearing similar
complaints from widows like Holly Wren for years. California Congresswoman
Ellen Tauscher is on the committee that recently ordered the Government
Accountability Office to investigate. It found that while most survivors
do get the benefits owed to them, there are system-wide problems that lead
to confusion and frustration.

Tauscher said the country owes its troops and
their families much more.

"That is a heinous bureaucratic tangle," she
said. "I believe each of these families should have a benefits advocate
cutting through the red tape and working this for them. That is the least
we can do."

The Department of Defense is trying to make
improvements, and will be instituting new casualty assistance policies
that include more training for casualty officers. The Army has set up a
call center and the Marine Corps has assigned long term case workers to
help survivors. DOD issued a statement that reads in part, "Each and every
situation and family member concern is taken very seriously and reviewed
with a view towards fixing the problem..."

Holly Wren has now joined other widows lobbying
for a centralized, one stop, casualty office to help survivors. She's hoping
that by sharing her story, she'll inspire change, and other widows won't
have to go through the same difficulty.

She said, "I just want them to make the process
better, because unfortunately there are more of us to come."

If your loved one has been killed in battle,
the last thing you may want to deal with is the military's massive bureaucracy.
But it is necessary to deal with several government agencies in order to
collect the benefits owed to you. If you need help navigating the system,
there are a number of groups that work for survivors. Following are some
links that may be of use: